


armistice of hearts

by TolkienGirl



Category: Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Genre: Aftermath of trauma, Bonding, F/M, Implied Relationships, Post-Film, a soft epilogue, this doesn't really heed the after-credits scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21534973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Maybe the world is a war.
Relationships: James Conrad/Mason Weaver
Comments: 1
Kudos: 45





	armistice of hearts

“I’m sorry,” she says, later. _Later_ , when they’re back on the ship, with even the swarming storms a mere dust mote in the distance. There is room enough here to bunk separately—she should, by the prevailing wisdom of the day, be quartered with San Lin.

Mason doesn’t care about prevailing wisdom. Never has.

He rolls his hands together; slender hands, the knuckles thickened by bruising. “Sorry?”

“Your dad’s lighter. I know it was the last thing you had of him.” She’s had her share of grief, but most of it has belonged to other people.

Unexpectedly, he smiles at this, one corner of his sensitive mouth tilting up. “The past few days have put that in perspective, yeah?”

Most of her film survived. She’d checked, while her hands were still shaking. While she was still finger-combing algae from her hair. There are duties and loves that death cannot sever. “Of course. And yet—”

“It died a good death,” he says, echoing her thought, in a way. “A good death for such a small thing.” He doesn’t move, doesn’t gesture towards the empty space beside him. But his eyes ask, and she answers, by coming to tuck herself against his side. 

“Conrad. Or…James.”

“Weaver. _Mason_.”

She likes the way he says her name. They have come out of the steaming tropics, yes, but even so, she finds that she wants warmth. _His_ warmth.

“Can I stay here all night?”

He nods. Turns so that his lips are pressed against her hair.

The silence isn’t made less sacred by their heartbeats. At last, she says, “I don’t think I’ll ever see such a beautiful world again.”

This, while they still smell of sweat and blood. This, while bodies are left rotting behind them. But—

“I know,” he whispers. “Beautiful and horrible all at once.”

The night they slept in safety, he said that men can’t come back from the war. She turned those words over in her mind until the urgent terror of their trek onwards forced them out again.

But in the end—maybe the world is a war.

(She was in Vietnam, after all.)

Kong will survive, and grow. The island will flourish, and they will tell no one of it, lest it become the next frontier of progress. Mason remembers the faces, young and old, of the people who have _lived_ there. The careful balance of their world permits them to hope for a future.

She remembers fire, cruelty, blood—and she shuts her eyes.

His hand finds its way into hers. Laced together, their fingers both must ache.

They don’t let go.

Six months later, in America, she kisses him.

It’s the future she hopes for.


End file.
